She gave me a kiss, then.
“I guess I like you pretty well, Frank.”
“We’ll get it.
Don’t worry.”
“I’m not.”
I stayed out there with him all night.
I didn’t give him any food, and I didn’t give him any sleep.
Three or four times he had to talk to Willie, and once Willie wanted to talk to me.
Near as I could tell, we got away with it.
In between, I would beat him up.
It was hard work, but I meant he should want that paper to get there, bad.
While he was wiping the blood off his face, on a towel, you could hear the radio going, out in the beer garden, and people laughing and talking.
About ten o’clock the next morning she came out there.
“They’re here, I think.
There are three of them.”
“Bring them back.”
She picked up the gun, stuck it in her belt so you couldn’t see it from in front, and went.
In a minute, I heard something fall.
It was one of his gorillas.
She was marching them in front of her, making them walk backwards with their hands up, and one of them fell when his heel hit the concrete walk.
I opened the door.
“This way, gents.”
They came in, still holding their hands up, and she came in after them and handed me the gun.
“They all had guns, but I took them off them in the lunchroom.”
“Better get them.
Maybe they got friends.”
She went, and in a minute came back with the guns.
She took out the clips, and laid them on the bed, beside me.
Then she went through their pockets.
Pretty soon she had it.
And the funny part was that in another envelope were photostats of it, six positives and one negative.
They had meant to keep on blackmailing us, and then hadn’t had any more sense than to have the photostats on them when they showed up.
I took them all, with the original, outside, crumpled them up on the ground, and touched a match to them.
When they were burned I stamped the ashes into the dirt and went back.
“All right, boys.
I’ll show you out.
We’ll keep the artillery here.”
After I had marched them out to their cars, and they left, and I went back inside, she wasn’t there.
I went out back, and she wasn’t there.
I went upstairs.
She was in our room.
“Well, we did it, didn’t we?
That’s the last of it, photostats and all.
It’s been worrying me, too.”
She didn’t say anything, and her eyes looked funny.
“What’s the matter, Cora?”
“So that’s the last of it, is it?
Photostats and all.
It isn’t the last of me, though.
I’ve got a million photostats of it, just as good as they were.